SPANISH FLU AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY: SCOPE, MORTALITY, TREATMENT METHODS

Abstract

In the literature on the history of medicine and epidemiology, the problem of the emergence and development of the Spanish flu has clearly received insufficient attention. Almost all the literature is devoted to the social consequences of this pandemic. Researchers have repeatedly turned to the history of the deadliest influenza pandemic of the twentieth century, but special interest in it today is associated with the emergence of a new COVID pandemic. The purpose of the study is to briefly summarize the data on the origin of the Spanish flu and clarify its scale in 1918–1920. The authors analyze the treatment methods of that time, and also try to trace modern views on the origin and genesis of this influenza strain. The authors also tried to explain the causes of high mortality among people of military age, the rate of spread and infection, to identify the features of the course of this disease in Russia. It is concluded that the causative agent of the Spanish flu became the progenitors of many modern influenza strains that caused the epidemics of the XX and XXI centuries.